Marianne Kimura （木村マリアン）

The unprecedented and deadly high temperatures in many parts of the world are not being addressed with adequate proposals. Consequently, the problem is only getting worse. So I have put together a list of ideas that countries could consider.

The headlines are pretty sensational: "Hundred Scottish churches up for sale as UK turns away from Christianity", "Losing their religion: why US churches are on the decline; As the US adjusts to an increasingly non-religious population, thousands of churches are closing each year"; "in Germany, hundreds of churches have closed in recent years"; "the Portuguese Church is facing a decline in Catholicism". I could list dozens more but I think you get the idea. Among all the coverage, I have not seen anyone giving credit to someone who predicted all of this back in 1585. I'm going to rectify that. Giordano Bruno wrote Lo spaccio della besta (The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast) in London and it was published also in London in 1585. This book predicts the closure of the churches because it predicted the decline of Christianity back in 1585!
Let's give Bruno credit for his brilliance, please!

The presence of #giganticwomen in gaming characters, sculpture (in the Dignity of Earth and Sky statue of a Sioux woman), in music videos, in real life with superstar billionaire songwriter Taylor Swift, and Yoruba goddess channeling pregnant pop singer Beyonce, makes me speculate that the Goddess has returned to America to battle the patriarchy. Also, I speculate why both Taylor Swift and Beyonce don't take sides in the war between the Palestinians and the Israelis.

By living in Japan, I was exposed to the idea of nature gods and goddesses (Shinto deities) and this opened my mind to the possibility of a sacred material nature.
The second step was that I started investigating fossil fuels in literature. And one day, in 2009, I noticed that the first line of "Romeo and Juliet" was about coal.
This presentation explains the secret play about the end of fossil fuels inside "Romeo and Juliet".

"Twelfth Night" contains a secret allegory dramatizing some aspects of Near Death Experiences, including the concept of reincarnation, the life review, the recognition of other souls in the spirit world upon death, the dark tunnel, and so forth. The idea of reincarnation is related to Pythagoras' notion of reincarnation, which is raised by Feste in the scene where he questions Malvolio. (This scene is a parody of the trial of Giordano Bruno by the Roman Inquisition, where Bruno was also asked about his opinion of Pythagoras' notion of reincarnation.)

Many scholars have seen the connection between the memento mori tradition in the visual arts in the Renaissance (this is usually where a SKULL appears somewhere in a painting as an allegory for 'death and the vanity of worldly desires') and the scene in the graveyard in Hamlet, where Hamlet holds up the SKULL of the dead court jester, Yorick. However, other visual images in Hamlet which are also common in Renaissance iconography such as the OPEN BOOK, a SWORD and FLOWERS have not been examined  in this symbolic and traditional context.

Shakespeare preferred pagan and pantheistic spiritual ideas that uphold the dignity and importance of nature and our material world and view people, (who are made of natural material such as water, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, iron, and so forth, and who eat and drink various foods, again material, to keep our bodies going), as just a small part of this scene. This is a vision at odds with the main religions in his era, the Abrahamic religions. This paper shows how Shakespeare subtly inserted criticism of the Abrahamic religions into his works.

In this paper, I examine how the Divine Feminine (symbolized by Portia) is presented and disguised in the text. Portia's disguise as a young man symbolizes the way that the Goddess, a heretical concept based on Bruno's pantheistic work, had to remain hidden in Shakespeare's plays. Next, I consider the issue of the Abrahamic religions (which to Shakespeare and Bruno were not very different from one another) and anti-Semitism in the play. Also, the symbolism of the golden rings is explained.

Bruno's heretical "Lo Spaccio della besta trionfante" (The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast") (1584) has been called blasphemous but I prove in this paper that it is rather relying on scientific concepts to trace out a path for mankind. Bruno sees Christianity as a social expression of thermodynamics and game theory, as it martialed people into collective action in order to reap material rewards from colonialism and capitalism, its successor cultures. Bruno postulates that as environmental problems and concomitant economic problems become more severe, Christianity will lose followers and there will remain a pool of leftover supporters who will not approve of these new developments. I argue that Putin and Trump are among these 'old order' that Bruno predicts in this book.

Circumstances make it clear that Mariana is like Hermione and Hero, similarly falsely accused of sexual immodesty and wantonness. All three of them wear head coverings of some sort, veil, mask, curtain, etc. and then these are lifted off, and the men who falsely accused them are sorry and then are united with them. I consider "sexual immodesty" in the context of Giordano Bruno's critique of Christianity in Lo Spaccio (1585) as a religion which gives out that "Nature is a whorish prostitute". Also, Shakespeare's choice of Vienna as a setting is considered, in light of Vienna's history as a center of religious turmoil and turbulence.

Giordano Bruno's "Lo spaccio della besta triomphante" (1584) ("The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast") has been characterized as heretical. blasphemous, provocative and so forth. However, in this paper I try to show how the book should be seen more as a clinical and scientific work of the Renaissance by a brilliant thinker far ahead of his time than as a polemical work of invective.

One set of imagery (such as "limed", "smells…rank", "bosom black as death")1 surrounding Claudius identifies his secret identity as "coal" (and fossil fuels) in the allegory 2 in Hamlet. However, there is another set of images associated with him that identifies him as embodying one more huge non-human entity of high impact and era-transcending influence: Christianity. And so, with Claudius' death, Shakespeare predicts the end of Christianity as well as the end of fossil fuels.

"Star Wars" (1977) greatly changed US movie history. I contend that it fulfills a prediction made by Giordano Bruno in "The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast" (1584): an exiled Momus figure (satire, arts) would be recalled back to western society and would help revive the west by bringing back the Divine Feminine in a communal project that happened as Christianity went into crisis and came to a slow denouement. I contend that "Star Wars" is this Momus figure.

Many Shakespeare scholars have attempted to discern an intentional religious message in The Comedy of Errors, a play which has many implied or direct allusions to both paganism and Christianity.

Using allegory, Shakespeare portrays the moment in history when Christianity developed and also depicts paganism from a historical perspective. He ties religious history to material and political concerns and sees religion as a calculated political strategy. However, because the material world is not cared for under the dominant regime of monotheism, the material world would eventually go into an environmental crisis and Shakespeare predicts that this will force people to make the material world a spiritual concern again (i.e. "turn witch").

This paper is a revised and improved (I hope) version of an earlier paper. I describe the allegory about mankind and the sun and coal in "King Lear". I show that Edmund is Shakespeare in a mask. This paper reveals more information about Shakespeare's own feelings about his position as a writer of secret heresies.

"The Comedy of Errors" is about the return of the Divine Feminine to the world. In historical terms, this means that what happened to the goddess Diana at Ephesus, where she was neglected and her temple fell into ruins as people converted to Christianity would be reversed, according to Shakespeare. The Book of Acts, chapter 19, is a major source for "The Comedy of Errors". Witchcraft, exorcism, a gold/silversmith worried about not getting paid, and confusion are all in both "The Comedy of Errors" and Acts 19. However, Shakespeare makes sure to reverse the situations so that in effect, besides predicting a pagan future, he also tries to erase or rewrite the Book of Acts 19. He uses allegory and imagery to subtly create his hidden heretical drama. Giordano Bruno's ideas and works are also a major source for "The Comedy of Errors", especially the Diana/Actaeon story found in "Gli Eroici Furori".

"Othello" contains an allegory about human societies (Othello) choosing coal (Iago) over the sun (Desdemona). Human societies killed off the sun economy and completely chose fossil fuels. Othello expresses remorse and regret in Act 5; his famous "O" groans show people coming full circle and predict the time (now) when human societies realize their mistake in doing away with the sun economy....Our own survival is threatened and climate activists urge us to get off oil and coal. Our dependence on fossil fuels is a material one. Shakespeare shows a nuanced understanding of the ways in which human materiality is entangled in the world.

What if Horatio is the hero of Hamlet? What if Horatio’s story is the real plot of the play? If we track Horatio’s actions, concerns and setbacks, a new perspective of the play emerges, much as two faces suddenly appear in profile when we look at the famous Rubin drawing of a vase in silhouette. In the traditional narrative arc of the play, where Hamlet is the protagonist, Horatio is Hamlet’s best friend. However, in the new narrative arc I propose, where Horatio is the protagonist, Hamlet is more than just a friend. Hamlet becomes a teacher, a powerful guide and mentor, or to use the apt Japanese expression, Hamlet becomes Horatio’s “sensei”, who initiates Horatio and trains him to fight in a particular mission. Horatio starts as an inexperienced fighter, totally inadequate. But thanks to Hamlet’s assistance, Horatio improves, becomes a collaborator in the battle, and continues to fight on after the tragic death of his sensei in battle.
This plot of teacher/student fighters (probably based on traditional martial arts) is one common trope in Japanese animé (such as Naruto, Jujutsukaisen or Ansatsukyoshitsu), where a less experienced character is initiated into a group of older and more experienced fighters. Eventually, this character has to grapple with the foe on her own. Because the particular fight in Hamlet is the epic battle against fossil fuels (still raging now, though already underway in Shakespeare’s era), Hamlet functions like an ingenious and coded centuries-long interactive animé where Prince Hamlet/Shakespeare subtly initiates Horatio/modern activist into insurgency. Horatio then becomes an avatar for a reader who understands the code, to take over for him in the prophesized battle against fossil fuels and capitalism.

The first published edition of Romeo and Juliet, you'll notice, refers to the play as a "conceited Tragedie". What is a conceit? LiteraryDevices.com has this definition: As a literary device, a conceit uses an extended metaphor that compares two very dissimilar things. A conceit is often elaborate and controls a large section of a poem or the entire poem. Conceits are often quite unique and ingenuous, and can present striking juxtaposition and comparison of the unlike things. At times this can mean that the reader is strongly aware of the dissimilarities between the two things being compared in metaphor, yet the conceit broadens the reader's awareness of the complexity of the things in question. A conceit therefore often contributes to a greater sophistication of understanding about the things being compared due to the surprise factor of the unusual comparison. The definition of conceit has changed over time. It was an especially popular literary device in the Renaissance Era, and with the so-called metaphysical poets, like John Donne. 1

Shakespeare's works were philosophically arrayed against "the Western symbolic". He was opposed to Christianity, monotheism, and he generally liked and adopted Giordano Bruno's heretical pantheistic ideas. In this paper, I especially explore how Ophelia is a symbol of oppressed pantheistic spirituality. She symbolizes material, the world, the universe, women, the Goddess, non-humans, and other categories not privileged in the "Western symbolic". Later I look at "As You Like It" and how it also encodes a goddess figure and expresses and celebrates some pantheistic views.

I re-visit my idea that "Juliet is the sun" is about a hidden allegory in "Romeo and Juliet" and use more recent New Materialism ideas to explain the allegory about Man (Romeo) and the Sun (Juliet) in history. After all, the sun is a material, an unparalleled player in the emergent history of human life on our planet. But it is not the only player, as Shakespeare knew. Coal was ascendant in his era.  But it is not ascendant forever.

Using cosmic imagery, Shakespeare inscribed an allegory of Bruno's Actaeon-Diana myth (where the Heroic Lover catches sight of Diana and achieves the "universal Apollo" through spiritual contact with the material) into his play All's Well That Ends Well. Helen is the Heroic Lover, Bertram is the "universal Apollo" and Diana is Diana. He also makes a prediction that natural religion will make a comeback in the world.

The success of Delia Owens' bestselling novel "Where the Crawdads Sing" is investigated as part of a trend toward getting in touch with the spiritual side of the material world, and this trend also includes the rise in the number of witches and the tourism boom in Japan, the home of Shinto.

(I wrote this paper during the Trump presidency, around 2016 or 2017). I should have said that in the paper. Back then my views were around 16,000. I think the Trump administration used bots to submerge the percentiles of anti-fossil fuel or environmentalist points of view. Back when Trump was in power, you may have noticed that Academia percentiles slowly disappeared and still remain entirely gone. I proposed a theory of bots to explain the disappearance of my percentile ranking and everyone else's percentile ranking too.

Critic Pierre Macherey argues that literature is a "material bearer of certain truth effects" and refers to "the shadowy presence of conflicting historical powers" we can find in texts. Using some examples from "Othello" and "Hamlet" I show that Macherey's idea is correct: Giordano Bruno's shadowy presence can indeed be seen in Yorick's skull; meanwhile in "Othello", Iago's victory over Desdemona reveals the dark power of fossil fuels to cancel the sun as an economic and cultural force in the 16th century.

The Winter's Tale is an allegory that predicts that witchcraft and witches will be resurgent, beneficial and welcomed by governments in the future in the task of finding spiritual and ecological approaches to reforming economies and political systems.

Detailed analysis of the close connections between Lo spaccio della bestia trionfante and "Hamlet"; this time the image of the fish is examined. The "fishmonger" image is seen as a symbol of Christianity (traditionally associated with a fish) since clerics typically need money in return for their spiritual services (as Bruno pointed out in his critique of Christianity in Gli Heroici Furori). Later in "Hamlet" the image of a fish changes to an organic natural one, with the material of the body of a king, a fish and a worm all shown to be connected. This matches with the warm endorsement of Bruno for a material divinity (the Divine Feminine) being accessible through the "ladder of nature" without a paid middleman. Bruno's idea is that the end of Christianity will bring a post-anthropocentric era. And Shakespeare uses fish imagery to show Bruno's idea.

"Macbeth" was written during the peak years of witch-hunting in Europe. Sylvia Federici links witch-hunting, with its moralistic program of terror, to the development and spread of capitalism and its rigid imposition of control over women. In this paper I argue that Shakespeare sensed how capitalism and fossil fuels were at the core of the rigid hardening and centralizing of British society at this time. Moreover, he takes the side of the witches, the communal, the folkish, the environmental, the local and he is completely against the capitalists and their big plans. "Macbeth" is subversive fare: a topsy-turvy witch hunt in which the witches secretly hunt the capitalist (Macbeth) and win. (Please note who lives and who dies in this play). This paper interprets "Macbeth" from the standpoint of a witch.

Ninjas used unconventional fighting strategies, played parts and sometimes had to wait in the shadows a long time before striking. Ninjutsu is based on Zen Buddhism and Taoism. This paper argues that it is possible that Shakespeare intuitively grasped some of the principles of ninjutsu because Prince Hamlet fights, after all, uncannily like a ninja.

Giordano Bruno's pantheistic universe has a goddess (the Divine Feminine). As You Like It crystallizes and provides an allegory of Bruno's pantheistic world and shows how Bruno's philosophy can solve social and economic ills caused by fossil fuels and capitalism.

Shakespeare adopted and allegorized ideas from Bruno, especially Bruno's pantheism and thermodynamic heliocentrism in his early comedies and tragedies. However, as Bruno's execution, on Feb. 17, 1600, neared and then passed, Shakespeare's work took a dramatically different direction as Bruno's suffering caused Shakespeare to express his mental pain and anguish, as well as his firm support of Bruno's ideas, through deeper development of his dramatic art.

Shakespeare supported Giordano Bruno's pantheism and rejected monotheism. Both Bruno and Shakespeare honored and worshiped the Goddess, the Divine Feminine, who has been long effaced and oppressed by a monotheistic culture that has only a male deity. Shakespeare scholarship has never before questioned whether or not Shakespeare was satisfied with monotheism. Thus Shakespeare scholarship needs its #metoo moment and this paper is it.

Shakespeare and Japanese anime both have extensive and diverse international fandoms. This presentation identifies two traits Japanese anime and Shakespeare share. I discuss non-western roots of anime and Shakespeare's deliberate though disguised criticism of the western symbolic.